


Unadulterated Loathing

by Harmonicalock



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Mycroft's diet, Mycroft-centric, eating disordered behavior, mycroft is not okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harmonicalock/pseuds/Harmonicalock
Summary: When Mycroft Holmes looked in the mirror, all he saw was fat. The story behind Mycroft's diets.





	Unadulterated Loathing

**Author's Note:**

> Hey ! It’s the 17th, which was the most likely date I went insane in the fanfiction world (the reason I started this whole crazy plan), so I decided to go to my usual style of writing for this one, aka torturing Mycroft. 
> 
> This was the third half-written version of the ‘angsty Mycroft one’ as I had been calling it and I only properly started writing it this morning. Whoops ! So I hope it’s okay, this one has been a bit rushed.
> 
> Again, massive thanks to my best friend/beta Alex for checking all the different versions of this for me !
> 
> Quote of the Title – “Unadulterated Loathing” – A line from the song “What is this feeling?” from the musical Wicked.

When Mycroft Holmes looked in the mirror, all he saw was fat. Right from his chubby cheeks to his swollen feet, he was fat. It had always been his biggest problem and, apart from his siblings, his biggest weakness. All his life, he had struggled with his weight, and it wasn’t coming to an end any time soon.

When he was 8, he was mocked and called ‘Fatcroft’ by the other kids in the playground because he couldn’t run as fast as them. He went home and sat, alone, in his room, miserably eating all the snacks he could sneak out of the kitchen cupboard. He knew it wasn’t good for him, and that he should be setting a better example for his baby brother, but he couldn’t help himself. It made him feel better, at least for a little while, until the insults started again.

When he was 10, relatives that he barely even knew whispered to his parents that they had to do something before the situation got out of hand. The ‘situation’ being their son. Mycroft accepted their harsh words, consequently only eating small portions at meals in front of them, but as soon as they were gone, he crept downstairs for seconds.

When he was 12, his mother gently suggested a diet for him, saying he could do with losing a few pounds. All he could do was look down at his overly rounded stomach and nod sadly, knowing that she was right. 

From there, it only got worse.

When he was 14, he followed his latest diet by the letter during the day, and gorged himself on junk food at night. The cruel taunts from teenagers who wanted to work their way up the pecking order slowly broke him down, and when that was combined with the same comments from his little brother he could no longer cope.

When he was 16, he barely ate at all. He spent his days sitting inside a small dorm room, having already got his A levels and excelling at his first year of university, surviving on nothing but black coffee and breath mints. Nobody noticed, he didn’t let anyone close enough to notice, and he was totally fine with that.

When he graduated at 18, he had reverted back to spontaneous bingeing in the middle of the night. And back to starving. And back again to bingeing. He continued with this cycle for the next thirty years, with his weight never rising high enough to be of concern but never dropping as low as he would have liked. Just as he began to get back down to his preferred weight, where the disgusting layer of fat covering his body was almost gone, he slipped up and lost control again. 

He was, essentially, a yo-yo dieter, not that he liked to associate himself with such terms of course. Except, being a Holmes, he took it to the extremes – switching between 500 calories a day and 5000, there was rarely an in between. It began to take its toll on him in his mid-twenties, and since then it had only gotten worse.

He had lost control of himself. Mycroft Holmes, the British Government, the smartest man in the country, the one who could take control of a small army in some of the most powerful nations in the world if it took his fancy, had completely lost the one thing he tried his hardest to get.

His dignity. And he hated himself for it.


End file.
